Appropriation and Interpersonal Relationships

Based on the results of three field research studies in Paris, this article outlines the way in which the individual constructs a cognitive and behavioral relationship with the environment at three different levels: housing, the residential neighborhood, and the city as a whole. Identity and environmental identification generating social cohesion and satisfaction is, according to the City-Identity-Sustainability model, an important condition for ecological behavior to occur. The appropriation or nonappropriation of a particular environmental context is analyzed in light of the differentiation of the relation to the dwelling, the immediate neighborhood, and the city and described in terms of modalities of interpersonal relationships, affective investment, satisfaction, and self-expression through residential history and place identity. The characteristics of modern urban life (mobility, transitional situations, and the denaturalization of the urban context) contribute to alter the individual’s relations to dwelling as well as to the immediate and enlarged urban context.